Tag: 2011

I’ve been to several camps this summer and early fall, but I haven’t really written anything about them since I mentioned sponsoring DrupalCamp LA 2011. I’ve decided that I’ll probably never document them individually but that a combined blog post would be reasonable. I’ll write this soon, probably next week (once things calm down a bit).

This weekend, I attended the first DrupalCamp in the Sacramento, California area. It happened to be held in Davis, a location which worked for me.

Some of you might know that I was talking about taking Amtrak’s Coast Starlight up to the Bay Area. I indeed did. Here’s some pictures: (flickr link coming soon; I have to upload the pictures).

But as for the camp itself, it’s best to break it down into the sessions I attended and then give my overall impressions.

Day 1

As every attendee certainly did, I started off my day listening to Nate Haug (@quicksketch)’s keynote speech. He talked about the community, contributing, contributing productively, collaboration, and the care shown to community members. It was a good start. After that, I went to my first session.

10-11:30: VoIP for Drupal: Turning Drupal into a phone system

The title of this presentation had intrigued me, and I’m glad I checked it out. Adam Kalsey (@akalsey) of Tropo did a fantastic job of demonstrating the VoIP module and how command sets could be sent to phone systems using PHP code.

1:00-2:30 – Using Drupal as an Application Development Platform

This was a neat presentation as well. It was also presented by Adam Kalsey. His thesis was essentially that Drupal is an application development platform that ships with a great CMS as its default implementation. He defended this fairly, outlining many of the subsystems that I indeed deal with regularly.

2:30-4:00 – Building a Distribution using Features, Drush Make, Installation Profiles, and more

Ben Shell gave a fascinating presentation on the topic above. I found this very useful, as it cleared up some questions I had regarding the whole thing. I liked how he spoke a bit about how to get drupal.org to fully package your distribution or installation profile for download!

Some dude who came from L.A. gave this one. I think his name was Kevin Kaland or something. Of course it was awesome; would I say otherwise? Fortunately, you don’t have to listen to me; Doug R. Wu has given a brief “str8up” account of the talk. That coupon code expires Monday, by the way.

Day 2

Morning-12 – Code sprint

Saturday ran late for some reason, and I got lost on the way back to campus, so I rolled in around 11 AM. I discovered that no organized code sprint was happening, so I worked more on adding Webform token support to Fill PDF on Drupal 7. This is completed now.

1:00-2:30 – Why Drupal uses hooks, and why you should too

I bumped into that Kevin Kaland guy again at this talk. Something about hooks in Drupal. People liked it or something. (If you blogged about this talk, can you link to it in the comments?)

2:30-4:00 – Know Where The Fire Is (Monitoring Drupal Sites)

I wrapped up my camp with Mike Hathaway’s Nagios talk. It was cool; Nagios is definitely a tool l will have to try some time, along with the Drupal Nagios module of course!

Conclusion

So ended my camp, and so began my transportational journey back…with a new sticker on my laptop!

I’m an Individual Sponsor of DrupalCon London 2011! (sorry if the link doesn’t work; I think only I can see it. However, take the friendly Access denied message you may receive as proof that the page does exist. It would say Page not found if it didn’t!

It’s curious that I would choose to sponsor an event that I’ve already invested a bunch in, but I think it’s that very reason that motivated me to do so. After all, what’s another £65? I’m happy to be chipping in a bit to bring worthy Drupal contributors to the conference. £65 could probably buy a one-way Ryanair ticket (maybe both ways with some of their prices…) or most of a night at a hotel! Apparently, Individual Sponsors will now also get some props and mentions – but I’ll tell you a secret: despite my Twitter exchanges, I was planning to sponsor even if I didn’t get mentioned for it.

Perhaps it’s just the “spirit of giving” that characterizes the Drupal community and makes it such a powerful product.

I’m pretty surprised myself at what I’ve just written in the title box, but it’s true, and all of the tickets are booked (including the DrupalCon London ticket itself). I’ll be attending my first DrupalCon! Needless to say, I’m quite excited. I’ve been to SANDCamp, which had (correct me if I’m wrong) over 300 attendees. That was the biggest Drupal event I’d been to to date at the time, and it was exciting to meet and see so many people, local and from afar.

I’m expecting to take it to a new level at DrupalCon, which has an estimated attendance of 1,500 people. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. This isn’t only the first DrupalCon I’ve attended; it’s also the first large Con of any kind for me. I’m delighted to make DrupalCon my first (and probably only regular) choice. Looking at the prices of other Cons, DrupalCon really is a steal at under £300 (or under around $500ish in USD).

As usual, if you want to try to chase me down during the Con and ask me a question, feel free. Advice is free if you catch me there! Of course, with so many superior options to choose from, why would you even bother? 🙂 Oh, I know…if you want to talk to someone from California, perhaps I can fit that niche!